Brightburn (2019)


If there is one rule that is almost universally true when it comes to movies - and especially science fiction and horror - it is when "From the Producer Of" gets top billing it is a warning that the movie that you are about to watch is probably not going to be that good.  The producer, to put it simply, is one of the people putting up money for a project.  It's not like in the music industry where the producer is the guy working with the engineer and the artist, and is often intimately involved in the creation of the music.  That means when you see "From the Producer Of", and that producer is a famous director with a bunch of hot properties under his belt, this means most likely he owed a debt to a friend or family member.  It also means the movie studio doesn't think they can sell the movie without tricking people into thinking that it was made by someone with a lot more skill. 

Such is the case with Brightburn.  James Gunn's name is all over this movie - until one looks closer and sees that the Gunns really involved are Mark and Brian, and the director is David Yarovesky.  It has familial obligation written all over it, with a bone tossed to a young guy who has done his time helping James Gunn with his films.  In the end the movie was not too bad, and it did make a little bit of its money back, so there may be better things down the line for everyone involved.  This still seems like James Gunn decided to loan some actors from The Guardians of the Galaxy and an assistant so that he could have some peace when Thanksgiving rolled around. 

Kyle Breyer (David Denman) and his wife Tori (Elizabeth Banks) live on their farm in Brightburn, Kansas, and are trying hard to have a baby.  One night their dream comes true when one literally falls out of the sky.  Their life is idyllic until 12 years later when the spaceship he was transported in wakes up and significantly changes Brad Breyer's (Jackson A. Dunn) demeanor from a shy pre-teen to an almost invincible killing machine.  

Brightburn aims to answer the question of, "What if Superman was evil?"  That question, already answered in greater detail and more effectively over two seasons of The Boys, boils down to a trail of death and destruction.  We get to view the origin of this, and a bit of what happens afterward, but little of it is satisfying.  None of the characters are too engaging - not even Brandon, who is the mopiest evil version of Superman they could find - and in typical slasher fashion they are there just to get knocked off.  It is as if Mark and Brian Gunn couldn't commit to full-on horror or dark fantasy, and pretty much bungled both. 

Where the movie does shine in places are some of the effects, particularly some of the practical makeup effects.  It is also where, toward the end, it fails miserably, with a horrible CGI version of Brad flying.  It makes what is supposed to be a horrifying scene shocking in how shoddy it looks, as if we have suddenly retreated to the mid-1990s on computer effects.  

Brightburn is not a terrible film, and probably would have been able to garner attention even without big names attached, but it is a hollow one.  The concept is interesting enough that a sequel, especially if there are other alien children as hinted in the end forming some sort of anti-Justice League, might be interesting and potentially better than this movie.  Then again, it may be as bad as the stuff DC has been churning out.  

Brightburn (2019)
Time: 90 minutes
Starring: David Denman, Elizabeth Banks, Jackson A. Dunn
Director: David Yarovesky


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Lawnmower Man (1992)

Image
Virtual reality has been one of the most hyped, and one of the most disappointing, promises of technology.  While it promotes immersion into a cybernetic world what it really provides are video games with 20-year-old graphics and the occasional bruise when one accidentally hits a closet door.  In the case of The Lawnmower Man  what it is promising is that something with graphics just a little bit better than Dire Straits's "Money for Nothing" video will somehow change the world and alter humanity. It was laughable then and it is laughable now.  The only person not laughing was Stephen King, who demanded that his name be removed from all future advertising for the movie because he never wrote this.  The story, of which a short film was made in the 1980s, involves a man unwittingly hiring a Greek god to mow his lawn and, after said god creates a spectacle, paying for the landscaping with his life.  It's only a few pages and, in my opinion, it is one of King's worst
Read more

Things (1989)

Image
Most of the time when I hear a movie is the worst ever I know that is hyperbole. There are few candidates and I would even say the famous book chronicling the worst movies ever made got it wrong.  Plan 9 from Outer Space is laughably incompetent, but enjoyable.  The worst kind of films are the ones where no joy can be found in the watching experience, for reasons ranging from unlikeable characters to just sheer boredom.  A truly horrible movie is something like  Things.   This is a 1989 direct-to-video horror film from Canada, filmed on 8mm and dubbed once it was completed and the makers realized most of the sound was unusable.  Director Andrew Jordan and writer Barry J. Gillis managed to grab porn star Amber Lynn for an hour to shoot her as a news reporter just so they could put her face on the video box.  Most of the music was done by Gillis, and some of it by a local band called Familiar Strangers.  It was filmed in large part in Andrew Norman's basement, and most of the props w
Read more

The Omen (1976)

Image
A movie does not have to be high art to strike a chord with the public.  The Omen was an attempt by writer David Seltzer to make some money and get a nice trip to the UK.  It just so happened that because of The Exorcist the public was hungry for more movies involving demons and such, and adding a veneer of Catholicism didn't hurt either.  The Vatican's secrets are most likely of more interest to scholars than anyone else, but a religion doesn't hang on over the centuries without creating a bit of mystery.  In this case, Seltzer settled on the Revelation of St. John, the low-fantasy portion of the Bible and, instead of an hilariously named (albeit historically correct) demon named Pazuzu, with The Omen we get the son of Satan himself.  When Robert Thorne (Gregory Peck) is informed that his child has died he visits a priest at the hospital in Rome where his wife is coalescing.  He is given an offer too good to be true: a foundling, whose mother died in childbirth, was born
Read more